


Henry’s Love Wins

by PhoenixFireAndSanelyInsane



Series: Henry’s Love Wins AU [1]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Eventual Happy Ending, Everyone Is Alive, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Henry Stein Saves Everyone, Henry’s Love Wins AU, Joey Drew Studios, Joey Drew being a Jerk, New Au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 04:35:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19760713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixFireAndSanelyInsane/pseuds/PhoenixFireAndSanelyInsane
Summary: I came up with a brand new AU! Read to find out more! I put a lot of time and thought into this!





	Henry’s Love Wins

**Author's Note:**

> So I thought of this and wrote out the details. It’s almost a fic as it is haha! I fully intend to write this out and do the main story myself. Oh, and just so y’all know, I personally imagine Henry (and Linda!) with Doberart’s design(s), and Sammy with Fishymom’s (only seen them on YouTube, I love their BATIM animatics!) design, though as I haven’t seen their character designs in color, I see Sammy with platinum/very pale blond hair, chocolate brown eyes, and slightly tanned skin. When I get my laptop back from the shop, I’ll add in a little pic of how I see Sammy. So for my AU, Sammy is currently the only one with an “official” design, therefore all of you are free to imagine everyone else with any design you want. At least until I pick designs for everyone else if I ever get around to it. Enjoy!

Okay, so, I thought of a “Henry Saves Everyone/Everyone Lives” AU, but with a twist or two I have yet to see in any other AUs.

First off, let’s start with the timeline:

The year the game takes place in is 2010. Henry is about 53. He and Joey started the studio in 1976 when he was 19 and Joey was 24. They both loved the classic 30s cartoons and wanted to create them since they were starting to become popular and “in” again. Henry and Linda were still only dating at the time, but he proposed a year later at the party the studio had to celebrate the first year being such a success. They were married in 1978, a little over a year after they got engaged.

Sammy, Wally, and Norman all worked there from day one. Thomas would pop up once in awhile to check on things since he was technically Wally’s supervisor from Gent (he was in training when he started at the studio, but he had JUST started the training, so he was simply the janitor for the time being, though training was slow and he only ever made it to a lower level maintenance man instead of a full brown technician), so Henry did have some idea of who he was. Susie came in a few months before Henry left in 1980, which is how she knows who he is. Jack came in about a month after the animator left when Joey started hiring more staff to help replace Henry.

Alice was his last big contribution before he left, which he did in November 1980 because Linda was about six months pregnant with their son, Nicholai, and she needed him to be home a lot more due to some complications, and working at the studio was keeping him away from her for too long at a time. Her design and everything was done, but the episode she would be making her debut in hadn’t been started yet and was a few weeks from being started, so Susie did not become the voice of Alice for a while.

Nick is currently 29, married to a woman named Jenessa (usually called Jen or Jenny), and they have a four year old daughter named Annabelle (usually just called Annie).

Okay, now onto the actual lore:

The events of chapter one and two play out like they do in the game, though with Henry recognizing Sammy, freaking out a bit at his old friend tried to basically kill him, worries about his mental state, kinda crying when Bendy got him, and vaguely recognizing Ink Bendy as Bendy. Chapter three is pretty much the same, Henry kind of recognizes Susie, he feels bad about her situation, worries about her mental state, but he’s a bit vocal about not liking that she’s wanting him to do her dirty work and hurt others.

Now, chapter four is pretty much the same deal until we have the mini Bendy vs Norman fight. He damn well knows Henry is in there, and one of the following two scenarios happens;

One, Bendy recognizes him and asks for help. Two, he goes off as best as he can with the Little Miracle Station in his way. Yells at Henry for abandoning them, for not caring about the studio and betraying Joey which turned Joey bitter and made him cold towards “his” creations (he told the toons that HE was their creator) so he could never love them no matter how many times he lied and said he cared. Henry sets him straight on all that (he didn’t abandon anyone, he has always cared about the studio and never betrayed Joey, he was their true creator, and he loved them like they were his own children). Either way, it ends with Henry promising to help him and make things right. He steps out of the station and touches Bendy’s shoulder in comfort, which they both expect to kill him like every other time Bendy touched him, but it doesn’t so he gives Bendy a quick hug before the Ink Demon drags off Norman’s body.

Henry, unfortunately, still has to fight Brute Boris, though it practically rips his heart out to do so, as does seeing Susie killed right in front of him. 

When he later meets back up with Allison and Tom in the vault, he tries to tell them that Bendy isn’t evil, but they ignore him and everything plays out the same until it comes to where Henry enters the throne room.

He does pick up the reel to examine it and listens to Joey’s recording. Bendy pops up from behind the throne, intending to greet Henry and find out if he had a plan to fix everything yet, but he started to transform into Beast Bendy and got scared. Henry dropped the reel and ran to him, grabbing his shoulders and begging him to hold on, telling him it was okay, he would be just fine. Bendy’s transformation did get completed, though he was obviously suffering, so Henry just hugged him and told Bendy how much he loved him, and his love didn’t change one bit just because the little devil now looked like a monster.

After a decent amount of this comfort, ink started dripping off as the transformation slowly reversed until he was Ink Bendy again, then even further until he was back to normal and clinging to Henry. Both of them cried in happiness and relief and they just sat there telling each other how much they loved each other.

They eventually calmed down and Henry asked for some info on what had happened, what the machine did, how Bendy even existed, etc.

Here’s the answers to those questions:

The machine turned normal ink into the special stuff used to create all the inky beings and currently flowing all over the studio. Bendy was the first one created, but there was no love behind his creation, so he seemed soulless. Boris was tried several times and a few of them were given autopsies to figure out what went wrong since the clones wouldn’t live for more than about a half hour at most.

Since Joey now thought that they needed souls, he tricked the going-insane Sammy into participating in an “experiment”, which didn’t turn him into a Boris clone, but instead into his in-game form. He kept failing at creating Boris, so one day he just told Thomas to do it and figure out what was wrong with the machine.

When Thomas did it, after checking that the machine was fine, he put care into trying to create Boris (Boris was secretly his favorite character from the cartoons), and he ended up with the Boris Henry later meets. But, as he didn’t put love into it, Boris was perfect except for the ability to speak. Of course, Thomas has to lie to Joey and make up a “problem” the machine was having because Mr. Drew wouldn’t react well to being told he was the problem. 

Alice was also brought to life by Thomas, though along with being unable to speak, she had imperfections. Her outfit hadn’t come out right; Shoes were her actual feet and climbed up her shins a bit messily, bow was cockeyed, gloves too small, etc. She was kept locked away in her dressing room, but occasionally Thomas would sneak Bendy and Boris in to visit her when Joey wasn’t at the studio because he felt bad for them all.

When Joey asked Susie to “bring Alice back to life again”, and she agreed, what he had done was try to fuse her and Alice together to give Alice a voice and fix her imperfections. But, as this was done out of greed, it failed and we got Physical Alice.

He made desperate attempts at the Butcher Gang as a last ditch effort to successfully create living characters, but he did it by himself with no good intentions whatsoever and we got the monsters.

Bertrum found out about what Joey was doing and how the ink worked with the machine, and in his attempt to ensure HE got the glory for Bendyland, he stole some to fuse himself with the ride (which, despite not actually knowing how to do it, he figured it out and it worked perfectly for him, save for corrupting his mind like the ink did to everyone else). At some point, ink containing the good, human part of his mind dripped out of the ride and ended up forming into the pacing/panicking Lost One that is encountered with his voice. He’s panicking because he doesn’t realize what happened and doesn’t remember anything about the ride even existing, or having even _STARTED_ working on Bendyland, he knows that he was hired to do it and plans were being drawn up, but otherwise he has no clue what’s going on. When the ride is destroyed, the rest of the ink he had used (that had consumed his body in the fusion process) leaked out and ended up back with the rest of the ink, just as all destroyed ink creatures did when they were taken down.

Allison and Thomas were invited back, much like Henry, after the studio had been closed down, with Joey saying he had been working on clearing out the building and had found some of their things, insisting they both come to get them and catch up over some coffee. When they got there, he took them by the ink machine, had them hold templates for Alice and Boris respectively, then suddenly threw a bucket of freshly made tainted ink at them to try again with turning humans into the characters, and ended up with who Henry later met in game, Allison Angel and Tom, who couldn’t remember who they used to be. Tom sort of did, he knew that Allison was incredibly important to him and he knew a lot about machinery, just not exactly who he was or that he had ever been human. Joey got frustrated and whacked off his arm with an ax, which led to him replacing it with the mechanical Bendy arm when he later stumbled across it. When he’s saved, his human arm is still on his body and functioning properly.

Jack, Grant, Shawn, and Lacie were all earlier attempts at fusing souls into the ink to create living characters, with Jack being the first attempt and ending up as a swollen searcher. The other three ended up as Lost Ones with varying levels of remembering their identities. Some other small employees (like at the bottom of the food chain) were thrown into the ink because they discovered dark secrets and Joey panicked that they would out him and ruin his life.

Wally was able to escape this, as by the time Joey invited him back, he had already moved to Florida and settled down, and he was too busy with dad duties to make the trip to New York.

Norman just knew too much from his sneaking around, so Joey got to him before he had a chance to leave and blab about anything going on in the studio.

Everyone, appearance wise, hadn’t aged a single day from the moment they were taken by the ink. Minus physical appearance, their bodies DID age, though slower than normal and their physical health was essentially perfect when they were saved due to the ink preserving their bodies and destroying any imperfections. So, basically, they may as well have just been frozen in time and are expected to live at least until every part of their bodies reaches the time of the average lifespan. So, up to an extra thirty years to make up for the 30ish they lost.

Once Henry and Bendy calmed down from Bendy being saved, Henry told him who had died and what had happened to those he (Bendy) didn’t know the fate of. Obviously, this upset the little demon greatly, and he asked Henry what they should do because he wanted everyone else to be okay too. It took some thinking, but Henry asked if he could still control the ink since he was made of it. Bendy didn’t know, so Henry runs and lets some drip into his hands from a place it’s running down the wall and takes it to him so he can try to manipulate it. He manages to make the ink float in the air and form the shape of a heart, so Henry suggests he try to make the ink bring up the bodies of everyone since they should be able to be reborn from it anyway, as they had been before.

Bendy agrees, so Henry takes him away from the throne room and across the ink pond to Allison and Tom, who are shocked at Henry returning alive and with an adorable little devil instead of the terrifying Ink Demon. He explains what happened and that he thinks he knows who they really are and that they can be saved too, and they agree to let him try so he puts Bendy down and suggests he try pulling out Boris first.

He’s able to do it without much effort, though Boris appears to be dead and he panics until Henry points out that his eyes aren’t X’s, just closed. Henry kneels next to the wolf and pet his cheek and told him everything would be okay, he was safe now and he was free and loved. This woke Boris up and he was able to speak, not well since he wasn’t used to it but he could.

Bendy was able to pull everyone out of the ink, and the same sort of scene pretty much just repeated for all eight employees Henry specifically knew of. With Susie, Henry spoke to both her and Alice separately and pulled Susie into a hug until she started “melting”, leaving Susie by herself with a puddle of ink slowly forming into Alice . When she formed, he let go of Susie and switched to Alice, now formed correctly and able to speak with the voice Susie originally provided for her.

Only Alice and Boris actually woke up, though, everyone else stayed out cold though the ink melted off of them. Bendy, of course, was exhausted by the time he got everyone out and got Boris to sit down and let him doze on his lap. Henry freed Allison and Tom by reminding them of who they were (to the extent of his knowledge) before the ink, and trying to pass as much love to them as he could while having them both pulled into a hug.

They were a little woozy when the ink finally melted off, but they were fine after taking a few minutes to sit down and breathe. They both remembered everything from their time trapped in the studio and agreed to help Henry get back to ground level so he could call for help. Alice and Boris also volunteered to help, and they all agreed on what they would do;

Tom would wait with the unconscious employees to make sure no one hurt themselves if they woke up before help arrived. Allison would be three floors up, waiting to lead the help down to Tom. Boris would be up two floors to lead help to Allison, Alice would be up two more to lead help to Boris, and Henry would be on the top floor with Bendy to call and wait for help to get there. Once they did their part, everyone would head up to join Henry on the main floor to stay out of the way.

Henry had to carry a sleeping Bendy all the way up and hold him while he stood just outside the front entrance to call 911 (he had shut off his phone when he realized he was trapped and there was no signal, but he turned it on once in a while to check, so he still had some battery left) and explain that he needed several ambulances. You can imagine the shock the police and EMTs had when they saw living cartoon characters!

Everyone ended up being okay, though being recommended to therapy to help cope with what happened, except for Sammy. His mind was too damaged from being corrupted by the ink for so long. He was still essentially a one man cult following Bendy, and he was admitted to a mental hospital for four months with Susie as his legal guardian until he was deemed capable of being responsible for himself again, and was released into her care with mandatory outpatient therapy for a few months afterwards (after those few months, he would be free to choose if he wanted to continue with it or not, which he did).

All three Toons went to live with Henry to recover, and after Linda got over the shock of living toons, what happened that kept her husband gone for a whole week with no contact, and practically exploded over Joey being a piece of shit, she welcomed them as if they were her own and fretted over the four of them non stop for a solid week before they convinced her that it wasn’t necessary.

Once the investigation at the studio itself was finished, Alice and Boris decided to go back and try to fix up the upper floors they had known as home before things turned bad for them. And to find and collect their personal belongings, as well as Bendy’s, to eventually bring them back when they were ready to return to living with Henry and Linda. It was what they felt would give them closure, trying to turn a place that brought them misery into something nice. Bendy has absolutely no desire to go back anytime soon, if ever, but asked that they don’t completely shut down the machine until he could save the Butcher Gang and anyone else still trapped within the ink.

Joey had a huge list of charges that an arrest warrant was put out for, but the second he knew Henry had set everyone free, he skipped town, but is eventually caught and convicted.

No one really knew any of the former employees had gone missing because he had kept their homes and affairs in order so there wouldn’t be any suspicions arising.

When he was caught, he asked to see Henry, who was notified and agreed to the visit. Henry, of course, asked him _why_ he did what he did, and he didn’t really explain except that he was desperate and craved power, he panicked when the studios success started to decline and he did whatever he had to do to remain at the top, but he failed and didn’t understand why his experiments didn’t work. So, he asked Henry what he did, how he saved everyone.

Henry’s answer?

_Love_. Joey never put any love into it, he only ever put greed into what he did. Henry showed them _love_ , and they were fixed. Made whole. They didn’t have as much as they needed, and he gave them more than enough to be complete. Love overpowered the hate and greed the ink was tainted with. 

**_ Henry’s love won. _ **

**Author's Note:**

> And that’s it! The name for my AU is “Henry’s Love Wins”! Yes, you are absolutely welcome to write and make art for the AU if you want, just make sure you mention the AU name clearly as credit, and mentioning me is optional but highly appreciated. I wanted an AU where everyone makes it out, but the ones I’ve seen usually have everything as all sunshine and rainbows almost immediately after everyone is free and leaves the studio. I wanted something a bit more realistic, so everyone needs at least a little help coping with everything. The Toons included! Bendy is basically a 9 or 10 year old child, and while I didn’t mention it in the huge ass description up there, he does have nightmares and basically handles it like a lot of kids that age would; Remembers, moves on with life and continues being a kid, but still has issues at times. He’s gonna be one of them that can overcome the situation just from having loved ones by his side to help him through the tough times and the nightmares and whatnot, since all he needed in the first place was love. And, well, he is created out of ink and not at all human. Logically, toons and humans would work differently, minds included, so they can manage better without therapy than humans can, but can still benefit from it. Of course, if you write something for the AU and want to put any of the toons in therapy, feel free. I just don’t personally intend to put them in it myself. At least right now. I may change my mind haha.
> 
> I didn’t really list everything in the order it all happened (I intended to, but it came out this way and I couldn’t rearrange it to a point it still made sense to me, sorry), but the important parts are there. I also intend to write out BOTH versions of the Bendy confrontation scene when I write out the main fic, and you can choose which one you prefer for either just reading fics or for doing your own thing with the AU. Unless otherwise stated, all BATIM works I post will be in this AU. If it’s not, it will be missing the “Henry’s Love Wins AU” tag and I will say so in an authors note. I hope you liked this and want to take this AU places!


End file.
